COVID-19: Enabling Remote Work for Advanced Medical Response

What is the right balance of courage, empathy and accountability that one needs to have to enable an effective remote team?

Carl Nicholas Ng, COO at Lifetrack Medical Systems shares with EngageRocket his experience in helming the team's operations through the pandemic.

COVID-19: Insights for Leaders - #SGunited #SEAunited

 

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Carl Nicholas Ng joined the Lifetrack Medical Systems team as their Chief Revenue Officer in 2017, overseeing commercialisation of their LifeSys platform internationally.

Carl has since taken lead as the Chief Operating Officer at Lifetrack Medical Systems in 2019.

Before joining Lifetrack, Carl has worked at the Bain & Company's Singapore office, focused on their Strategy and Telecoms and Technology practice groups. 

 

 

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Over five billion people don't have access to medical imaging such as x-rays.

 

  • With that in mind, Lifetrack Medical Systems has been on a mission to be a cohesive link between geographies that have limited access to medical imaging. Carl Nicholas Ng, COO at Lifetrack Medical Systems, sits with Nauveed Salim, Workplace Strategist at EngageRocket to talk about the issues around medical imaging that their team is solving. 

  • Lifetrack Medical Systems works in the space between radiologists and the imaging equipment these medical professionals rely on. The team at Lifetrack has identified that the legacy software used by radiologists to access images generated by medical equipment is a limiting factor in their ability to reach more patients. Through their developments, traditional medical imaging equipment is able to be truly distributed as an enterprise radiology platform. 


  • Lifetrack Medical Systems has launched a free initiative for COVID-19 triaging, recognising that many medical teams use medical imaging equipment to detect symptoms of pneumonia, an early indicator of the coronavirus. Their team have been pioneers in this distribution of medical technology - by using the advantages of their distributed system to create a secure, anonymised repository for researchers and radiologists. This repository of images enables them to identify cases faster, and identify patients for further testing earlier. 

What are the challenges that you have observed, Carl, in the medical world?

 

  • There is no set procedure for medical teams around the world in how to respond to COVID-19. Some countries, such as the UK, utilise remote triaging to aid in the process of identifying COVID-19 cases. Our team has been able to use our software to help inform medical teams for which cases to prioritise for molecular tests, and whom to quarantine while pending further testing. This process illuminates that hospitals are also simultaneously planning their own processes in reaction to the virus, and are also figuring out their business continuity practices. 

     
    "We've actually just signed our second hospital, which is actually functioning as part of the healthcare response to COVID-19 in another island in the Philippines. The first was a provincial healthcare facility, which is in central Philippines, near the famous beaches in Boracay... So the radiologist in that hospital uses our software, and is based on another island. Before, they wouldn't be able to access their equipment because of the lockdown. Now they're able to access the CT scans remotely. "

     
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6 Questions to ask your employees during covid-19
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We’ve analysed over thousands of employee answers from companies of all sizes and industries in Singapore to dig into the factors that are impacting employee well-being and engagement through this crisis and beyond.


 

What challenges have you faced as a leader?

  • Enable your teams to make use of their time working remotely, as effectively as they can.

  • If infrastructure access is an issue, resolve it the best you can. The Lifetrack People Team under Carl had full desktops delivered to the doorsteps of their developers, to allow them to be able to use the proper setup for their sophisticated software. EngageRocket data has found that access to infrastructure is one of the main barriers to productivity. 

  • Also, tackle the issues that people can face during this period. Carl mentions that Lifetrack has tried to provide stability for team members on daily wages, and aren't able to work on their administrative/clerical tasks due to disrupted work, by applying for relevant government subsidies on top of providing a guaranteed portion of their pay, independent of whether they are able to work or not.

  • Communication is another issue that has emerged, which the Lifetrack People team has responded with developing virtual water-cooler areas and frequent catch-up sessions. The development of a monthly employee newsletter (with a section named Carl's COVID Corner) has also helped their teams stay abreast with developments in policy and working processes, while keeping morale high through transparency over the company's situation and and progress.

What about engagement, performance management and onboarding?

 

  • Lifetrack Medical Systems has had a seamless process of onboarding, due in part to their early investments in building a culture that involves remote teams. New onboarded employees have been able to overcome barriers posed by COVID-19, and Carl reports one employee was even able to go on parental leave with the support they're giving to remote employees. One barrier faced in onboarding is the inability to provide personal computers for new hires, like they were able to do for existing employees, because supply chains of IT vendors have been disrupted. This infrastructure gap has lead to their new hires to rely on their own personal computers. 

  • As a company, Lifetrack Medical Systems lies between the agility of a technology startup and traditional vendors of radiology equipment. Sales teams within their company were affected by the inability to do product demonstrations, but instead to maximize productivity - their teams turned towards working on how to best migrate their Sales CRM and other forms of organisational debt, leveraging on the productivity gains that many remote teams have in having long hours of undisturbed periods to work on structural processes of their team.
     
  • Carl also shares that his experience with using EngageRocket, has allowed him to run pulse surveys to gauge sentiment immediately from his team, and through the findings of the survey, he aims to better engage his team, and inform team leaders of changes of the support to be provided. Lastly, as part of tackling organisational debt, Carl is working to formalise a performance management framework to reward top contributors and determine bonuses, promotions and incentives in a more structured way, to recognise team members who are contributing to the company's development.

What is one lesson you have for leaders battling the same issues in remote work?

 

  • Leaders, learn not to micromanage your team, but instead use the remote work situation as an opportunity to learn how to delegate. Learning how to do this allows you to empower your workers as well as improve your own management capabilities.

     

    "Trust goes both ways, as employees may at times not match up to expectations. In this period of adjusting to a new normal, leaders should understand that not all employees are able to match up to the 'always online' expectation, as everyone has their own style of working. Instead, provide a structure to allow each of your employees to thrive."

     

 

Watch our videos with other leaders

 

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Additional Resources: 

 

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Business Continuity Plan

While a BCP is focused on bringing operational processes set in place, a People Continuity Plan  focuses on developing an environment that is supportive of your employee's emotional health, as well as developing procedures to manage critical business functions from 

Here are some resources for building psychological resilience for your teams, developing your people strategy and introducing succession planning for your teams.

Read our resources about COVID-1
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Webinar: Global perspectives: Thriving in the new normal


An exclusive panel discussion with global perspectives from the United States, China and Australia with Subhadra Dutta, Director, People Science & Analytics at Stitch Fix (San Francisco), Andrew Petering CEO at Nexus Hospitals (Sydney) and Neo Zhang, VP Strategic Development at Zhihu.com (Beijing).  

Learn more

 
 
Visit our resources page to learn more about how to put your people-first during COVID-19

 

COVID-19 HR Resources
EngageRocket is an employee engagement and performance management platform that helps businesses build engaged teams, empowered managers, and elite organizations. Trusted by the top companies in 18 countries and spanning 20 diverse industries—including Sephora, Toyota, Nikon, CGS-CIMB, and Epson—EngageRocket provides continuous listening and real-time analytics to support impactful management action.

 

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